That’s up to them, I thought, which reminds me that I have to stop using phrases meaningless except between me and Denoon. See what happen! is another phrase I have to stop using for the same reason. That’s up to them arises from an older Jewish couple who had come to Botswana with the Peace Corps and had had a number of difficult cultural adjustments to make, the one they talked about most being that their Indian upstairs neighbors ate rice every day. The Roths believed strongly that it was more appropriate to eat potatoes every day as a starch staple. Mr. Roth agreed with his wife that the Indians were strange, but when she continued to wonder over and over at this matter in front of people, his attempt to get her to abbreviate her going on about this was to say — of the Indians preferring rice — That’s up to them. I told this story to Nelson and he found it as obscurely funny as I did, and between us it became indispensable as a signum of the recurring problem of other people doing things you find peculiar or stressful but probably shouldn’t. The provenance of See what happen! was a lake in a park in Oakland where there were flocks of geese and ducks. A rabble of Hispanic boys was there, with one ten- or eleven-year-old ringleader urging a five-year-old minion to try to urinate on a duck. The five-year-old was reluctant but began complying, running after some ducks with his tiny penis out, after the older boy had inspired him with cries of See what happen! The deed was being done in the scientific spirit, apparently. Where could you find a better emblem for dubious propositions being vigorously encouraged, and where is Denoon, who understands, and what is he doing now?